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As we navigate the brave new
world of online advertising, think about your own Web consumption
patterns.

If you’re like most people, you have a unique style of browsing
for news and entertainment. In both your online research and
news-gathering, a few basic patterns are likely to emerge:

You are in charge of your own
browsing path and choose your own (content) adventure. Pages
and content you consume aren’t laid out in any particular
order.

The headline is the dominant
driver of your consumption — if it doesn’t capture your
attention, you will move on to billions of other
options.

More is the order of the day.
Once a person finds something that interests him or her, they
consume that content until they run out of time or content that
interests them.

Whether you are researching things to do on vacation or solutions
for a project at work, successful publishers capitalize on these
behaviors. Search optimization, social amplification tools,
headline testing, and the promotion of related and popular
content are of paramount importance to all content sites. The
most successful ones do a great job at most or all of these
tasks.

If these tenets are key to publisher success at audience
building, might they also help with improving the results of
advertising creative? If the Web is a new content experience, why
do so many online ads look like animated print ads, or TV ads
with the sound turned off?

Perhaps the two most utilized online navigation tools are the
back button and the “related/suggested content” areas on a Web
page. The back button is acknowledgment of a wrong turn – “let me
retrace my steps.” The related/suggested content is a
continuation of a session – “Give me more!”

In keeping with this behavior, display ads designed to feature
content (that is, ads that act like recommended content areas)
are much more likely to be interacted with — and clicked.

For banners to behave most effectively in their capacity to serve
related content, here are some basic rules:

Ads should provide various
content options for exploration

They should be compelling,
i.e., minimize “sales/marketing speak” in headlines — and copy,
unless you want users to hit that back button.

Ad should give readers more
of what they have already expressed interest in

Our brand partners at Business Insider have experienced success
engaging consumers by following these guidelines:

Make content the center of your creative
strategy. You can’t tack content on to the end of your
ad and expect the same kind of impact.

Avoid marketing speak and overly promotional
language. Content needs to be conversational and
informative. Don’t limit your focus on the company/products you
are looking to promote, but it must be done much more gently than
that of the typical ad message.

Refresh often. Ever seen an ad say “join the
conversation,” but when you join you realize they haven’t said
anything new for months? Ads themselves may not constantly need
to be redesigned, but the content within them should be.

Highlight environments where people can get
more. Content-driven ads complement the work you’re
doing on your own brand’s site and/or social channels. Make the
connection.

Despite all the hype, the banner is far from
dead. It’s just suffering from a frozen creative
paradigm rooted in print and television traditions that aren’t
native to the Web.